Saturday, April 16, 2011

In the last 30 years Microwave Ovens have almost replaced traditional methods of cooking. Now over 90% of American homes have microwave ovens used to “mic” their meals.Because microwave ovens are so convenient and energy efficient, (compared to conventional ovens) very few homes or restaurants are without them.

In our fast-paced , fast-food lifestyle, we want everything Now. But what do we really know about them? How do they work?Do they leak Radiation?Is Microwaved Foods safe?

How do Microwave Ovens work?

The microwave radiation produces heat inside the food in the oven. Heat is produced when the water molecules in the food vibrate (at a rate of 2,450,000,000 times per second) when the food absorbs the microwave radiation. The movement of the molecules produce friction which causes heat. This heat cooks or warms up the food.

Radiation Ovens? (Killer Convenience) Do They Leak Radiation?

In Dr. Lita Lee's book, Health Effects of Microwave Radiation - Microwave Ovens, and in the March and September 1991 issues of Earth letter, she stated that every microwave oven leaks electro-magnetic radiation, harms food, and converts substances cooked in it to dangerous organ-toxic and carcinogenic products. Further research summarized in this article reveal that microwave ovens are far more harmful than previously imagined.(Lee, Lita, "Microwaves and Microwave Ovens," 14 May 2001)

Microwave heating of the products led to the release of potentially harmful amounts of BPA. “There is no such thing as safe microwaveable foods. (Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri to theJournal-Sentinel)

Bisphenol A, (BPA) a chemical toxin that affects neural and reproductive development, is present in some popular plastic baby bottles and low doses of the chemical are linked to cancers, early puberty, obesity, and diabetes.

Radiation, as defined by physics terminology, is "the electromagnetic waves emitted by the atoms and molecules of a radioactive substance as a result of nuclear decay." Radiation causes ionization, which is what occurs when a neutral atom gains or loses electrons. In simpler terms, a microwave oven decays and changes the molecular structure of the food by the process of radiation. Had the manufacturers accurately called them "radiation ovens", it's doubtful they would have ever sold one, but that's exactly what a microwave oven is.

We've all been told that microwaving food is not the same as irradiating it (radiation "treatment"). The two processes are supposed to use completely different waves of energy and at different intensities. No FDA or officially released government studies have proven current microwaving usage to be harmful, but we all know that the validity of studies can be - and are sometimes deliberately - limiting.

If Microwave Ovens were really harmful, our government would never allow them on the market, would they? ….would they?

Recent work being done at the University of Warwick in Great Britain warns that microwave radiation is damaging to the magnetic activity of human life vibrations.Over 20 years ago Russia established microwave radiation limits 1000 times more stringent than in the United States and Great Britain.

Is Microwave Foods Safe?

The Russian investigations published by the Atlantis Raising Educational Center in Portland, Oregon. Carcinogens were formed in virtually all foods tested. No test food was subjected to more microwaving than necessary to accomplish the purpose, i.e., cooking, thawing, or heating to insure sanitary ingestion. Here's a summary of some of the results:

B) Various kinds of damaged to many plant substances, such as alkaloids, glucosides, galactosides and nitrilosides.

C) The degradation of nucleo-proteins in meats

A Swiss study found food that is microwaved is Not the food it was before. The microwave radiation deforms and destroys the molecular structure of the food- Creating radioactive compounds.When microwaved foods are eaten, abnormal changes occur in the blood and immune systems. These include a decrease in hemoglobin and white blood cell counts and an increase in cholesterol levels.An article in the journal Pediatrics warns that microwavinghuman milk damages the anti-infective properties it usually gives to a mother’s baby.

Microwaved blood kills patientIn 1991, there was a lawsuit in Oklahoma concerning the hospital use of a microwave oven to warm blood needed in a transfusion. The case involved a hip surgery patient, Norma Levitt, who died from a simple blood transfusion. It seems the nurse had warmed the blood in a microwave oven. This tragedy makes it very apparent that there's much more to "heating" with microwaves than we've been led to believe.Blood for transfusions is routinely warmed, but not in microwave ovens. In the case of Mrs. Levitt, the microwaving altered the blood and it killed her. It's very obvious this form of microwave radiation "heating" does something to the substances it heats. It's also becoming quite apparent that people who process food in a microwave oven are also ingesting these "unknowns".

Scientific Evidence and Facts

In Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, at 3(2): 43, it states

"A basic hypothesis of natural medicine states that the introduction into the human body of molecules and energies, to which it is not accustomed, is much more likely to cause harm than good. Microwaved food contains both molecules and energies not present in food cooked in the way humans have been cooking food since the discovery of fire. Microwave energy from the sun and other stars is direct current based. Artificially produced microwaves, including those in ovens, are produced from alternating current and force a billion or more polarity reversals per second in every food molecule they hit. Production of unnatural molecules is inevitable. Naturally occurring amino acids have been observed to undergo isomeric changes (changes in shape morphing) as well as transformation into toxic forms, under the impact of microwaves producedin ovens.

One short-term study found significant and disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwaved milk and vegetables. Eight volunteers ate various combinations of the same foods cooked different ways. All foods that were processed through the microwave ovens caused changes in the blood of the volunteers. Hemoglobin levels decreased and over all white cell levels and cholesterol levels increased. Lymphocytes decreased. Luminescent (light-emitting) bacteria were employed to detect energetic changes in the blood. Significant increases were found in the luminescence of these bacteria when exposed to blood serum obtained after the consumption of microwaved food."

The Swiss clinical study

Dr. Hans ulrich Hertel, who is now retired, worked as a food scientist for many years with one of the major Swiss food companies that do business on a global scale. A few years ago, he was fired from his job for questioning certain processing procedures that denatured the food.

In 1991, he and a Lausanne university professor published a research paper indicating that food cooked in microwave ovens could pose a greater risk to health than food cooked by conventional means. An article also appeared in issue 19 of the Journal Franz Weber in which it was stated that the consumption of food cooked in microwave ovens had cancerous effects on the blood. The research paper itself followed the article. On the cover of the magazine there was a picture of the Grim Reaper holding a microwave oven in one of his hands.

Dr. Hertel was the first scientist to conceive and carry out a quality clinical study on the effects microwaved nutrients have on the blood and physiology of the human body. His small, but well controlled, study showed the degenerative force produced in microwave ovens and the food processed in them. The scientific conclusion showed that microwave cooking changed the nutrients in the food; and, changes took place in the participants' blood that could cause deterioration in the human system. Hertel's scientific study was done along with Dr. Bernard H. Blanc of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the university Institute for Biochemistry.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Negative Calorie Foods are a group of fruits and vegetables, which use more calories to digest than the calories food actually contains.

The body has to work hard in order to extract calories from these foods. Even though a food may contain equal amount of calories, much less of these calories can possibly turn into fat in negative calorie foods as fewer calories are actually available to the body. This gives these foods a tremendous natural fat-burning advantage.

Simply...the idea is, you burn off calories by eating these foods.

Example A- A piece of Cake consisting of 400 Calories may only requires 150 Calories to digest by our body, resulting in a net gain of 250 calories which is added to our body fat.

Example B - A raw piece of celery (about 5 calories) will require much more calories to chew and digest, so resulting in a net loss of calories from our body fat. So it would seem the more you eat, the more you lose weight.

How Does It Do That?

All foods have a nutrient (carbohydrate, fat, protein), caloric (calories) and vitamin & mineral content. Vitamins stimulate living tissues to produce enzymes that breakdown the caloric nutrients of that food.

The foods with negative calorie contain sufficient vitamins & minerals that produce enzymes in quantities sufficient to break down not only its own calories, but additional calories from body in Chewing and Digestion as well. This is called "Negative Calorie Effect".

FACT OR MYTH?

A whole pound of Raw Green Vegetables only has 100 calories. Eat a pound and you'll be full, satisfied, and maybe even completely stuffed. There is plenty of science to support the fact that a raw food diet of fresh fruits and vegetables will help you lose weight.... and by eating them causes healthy enzymes to be released in the stomach. Enzymes aid digestion and help your body be healthy in a number of ways. Enzymes break down foods and help increase your metabolism rate.

So do you burn up more calories than you ate? That is yet for scientists to prove. But the nutrition facts indicate that diets high in fruits and vegetables can indeed help you lose weight.

THE NEGATIVE FOODS LIST

Dr. Victor Hugo Lindlahr, (American Health Food and Weight Loss Pioneer) actually made a list of foods that are now touted as negative calorie foods. Back in 1929, Dr. Lindlahr noted that these foods seemed to help increase the metabolism, help with fat loss, and detoxify the body.

When you eat a giant meal of organic, raw, vegetarian-type of foods instead of processed fatty foods, you certainly do ingest fewer calories, and your body also burns up a bit more calories in digestion.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) are now used throughout your food supply and in animal feed. These stealth ingredients are unlabeled, yet they are known to be dangerous to humans, animals, and the environment. As a conscious consumer, only YOU can stop the spread of GMO practices by choosing to say NO to GMO food.

What are Genetically Modified (GM) Foods? And why should you care?

The term GM foods or GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) is most commonly used to refer to crop plants created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biology techniques. These plants have been modified in the laboratory to enhance desired traits such as increased resistance to herbicides or improved nutritional content. The enhancement of desired traits has traditionally been undertaken through breeding, but conventional plant breeding methods can be very time consuming and are often not very accurate. Genetic engineering, on the other hand, can create plants with the exact desired trait very rapidly and with great accuracy.

For example, plant geneticists can isolate a gene responsible for drought tolerance and insert that gene into a different plant. The new genetically-modified plant will gain drought tolerance as well. Not only can genes be transferred from one plant to another, but genes from non-plant organisms also can be used. The best known example of this is the use of B.t. genes in corn and other crops. B.t., or Bacillus thuringiensis, is a naturally occurring bacterium that produces crystal proteins that are lethal to insect larvae. B.t. crystal protein genes have been transferred into corn, enabling the corn to produce its own pesticides against insects such as the European corn borer. For two informative overviews of some of the techniques involved in creating GM foods, visit Biotech Basics (sponsored by Monsanto)

Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting organism is said to be "genetically modified," "genetically engineered," or "transgenic." GM products (current or those in development) include medicines and vaccines, foods and food ingredients, feeds, and fibers.

In 2006, 252 million acres of transgenic crops were planted in 22 countries by 10.3 million farmers. The majority of these crops were herbicide- and insect-resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and alfalfa. Other crops grown commercially or field-tested are a sweet potato resistant to a virus that could decimate most of the African harvest, rice with increased iron and vitamins that may alleviate chronic malnutrition in Asian countries, and a variety of plants able to survive weather extremes.

On the horizon are bananas that produce human vaccines against infectious diseases such as hepatitis B; fish that mature more quickly; cows that are resistant to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease); fruit and nut trees that yield years earlier, and plants that produce new plastics with unique properties.

In 2006, countries that grew 97% of the global transgenic crops were the United States (53%), Argentina (17%), Brazil (11%), Canada (6%), India (4%), China (3%), Paraguay (2%) and South Africa (1%). Although growth is expected to plateau in industrialized nations, it is increasing in developing countries. The next decade will see exponential progress in GM product development as researchers gain increasing and unprecedented access to genomic resources that are applicable to organisms beyond the scope of individual projects.

Have you ever wondered just how many GMOs are out there? If not, you might be surprised to learn that 86% of corn and 93% of soybeans grown in the United States is genetically modified. In fact, according to California’s Department of Food and Agriculture, 70% of processed foods in American supermarkets now contain genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. You might also be surprised to learn that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has decided to allow the unrestricted use of another GE crop: alfalfa.

What is alfalfa, and what is it used for?Alfalfa is a perennial legume that is widely grown throughout the United States. Although it can be used in human food (i.e.: alfalfa sprouts), its widely used as animal feed, particularly for dairy cows.

GE alfalfa, which is more commonly known as Roundup Ready alfalfa, is distinctive in that it has been genetically engineered to withstand direct application of glyphosate-based herbicides (Roundup) to kill nearby weeds.

What did USDA’s EIS reveal about the environmental impact of GE alfalfa? USDA released a draft EIS on the potential impacts of deregulating genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa in December 2009, and a final version in December 2010. The EIS revealed that:*
• Genetically engineered alfalfa will increase the use of glyphosate
• Plants exposed to glyphosate “might experience impaired germination or growth characteristics”
• If GE alfalfa is deregulated, there is risk of contamination of non-GE crops
• There is no information available on the long-term allergenicity and toxicity impact of GE alfalfa on humans and animals